Liberating the Lilacs

One of my first real careers was in sales and design at a nursery and landscape company. I acquired a variety of the trees and shrubs in my yard from the throwaway pile that accumulated every summer. With “room for everything” on my 5 acres, I couldn’t help rescuing the most withered and stressed plants that were weeded out of the sales stock and left for dead by the dirt pile. While some just needed too much care and energy at the nursery to be brought back to sell, I didn’t mind giving them a second chance at life on my little homestead. Looking around at my greatest successes, I’m inspired to write about strength and perseverance by both the thriving Ohio Buckeye trees and the once thriving lilac hedge by the barn. Today I’m going to talk about the Lilacs.

The lilacs were once small and fragile. They had been root bound in pots for years at the back of the nursery when I brought them home. I had to cut the pots off the tight mass of roots and then I set the stunted lilac twigs side by side in a trench and covered them with soft fresh dirt. I had faith. I knew lilacs were tough. I knew they could grow on the side of rocky farm fields or fight their way through the tangle of a drainage ditch. They didn’t disappoint. I must have had one of every variety in that trench because they eventually grew their way into a beautiful 8 foot hedge that bloomed every color of lilac.

But I took the strength of the lilacs for granted. I ignored the fact that the wild grape vines had begun to grow up among the branches. I cut them off on a couple of occasions but I never quite got all the vines out. Life got busy and the grapevine engulfed the lilacs.

I believed they would survive. That their hardiness would prevail. So what if I lost a few branches here and there. Surely they would spout new growth at the base and come back thicker and stronger than ever.

This Spring I saw the real damage the vines were doing. I saw where they were wound tight around the branches. The lilac wasn’t fighting, it wasn’t spouting new growth. It looked tired and defeated.

I spent three days cutting the lilac free of the vines.

As I carefully snipped each curling tentacle off the struggling lilac I reflected on my mistake. I had assumed the lilac could handle the stress of the vines. I had assumed that because the lilac had done it before it could do it again. I had assumed that when I got around to taking care of it, it wouldn’t be too late.

It wasn’t too late…. but I almost was.

Liberating the lilac was very therapeutic for me. It also felt like something I had to do. I felt I owed it to these lilacs that I saved once and then neglected. I owed it to them…and I owed it to myself.

In many ways over the past couple of years- I have been these lilacs. I have let the stress and obligations of others consume me and take hold of me like the grapevine. And I thought that it was okay because I knew that I was tough, I knew that I was resilient. I knew that it wouldn’t kill me. But what I didn’t realize is how you can become when you are deprived of the sunlight. How tragic it really is to be too tired to bloom.

What a difference there is between surviving and flourishing.

In many ways I was only surviving the daily grind of my job. I was successful in terms of results and compensation but my strength had become my weakness. The more I took on, the more I compromised myself, the more the job expected I would keep doing it…the thicker the vines grew until they consumed it all. All the light. All the good.

It’s been a few months now since I began liberating the lilacs. There were no beautiful blooms this spring but now that they have had a chance to recover I am hopeful next year will be different. Their branches still bear the scars of strangulation, the deep creases where the vine once held tight. It is important for me to acknowledge those scars. To not expect them to endure it again. There has to be change and action sometimes.

To flourish you have to let the light back in…you have to make room for all the good.